If you’re a regular TPM Reader I need your attention for a moment. If you’re a Prime Member, great! I hope you got a chance to read our biography of the AR-15, the debut article from TPM’s new online magazine The Arch. Over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing news about a series of new offerings. But if you’re not a Prime member, I want to invite you to join us today. Like right now. Join us in building the next TPM.
Today we’re launching our annual Prime membership drive. If you’ve been loving TPM and thinking of join, let me cut to the chase and give you the link right now. If you need a bit more convincing, please join me after the jump where I’ll explain what we’re doing and why it’s so important.
TPM is coming up on its 16th anniversary online. Yes, Good Lord, 16 years. It is no exaggeration to say that the publishing world has been turned upside down around us over that time. We thought it had changed dramatically by 2007 and 2008. But the changes since then are far greater than in TPM’s first seven or eight years. In recent years, the big focus in the media world, especially the digital media world has been scale. Bigger, bigger, bigger. Big numbers, scale, social distribution deals.
This is all closely tied to the intersection between the publishing and advertising businesses. About four years ago we decided that wasn’t a path that made sense for us. Our strength, the core of our business was our unique role in the larger news ecosystem and our relationship with our core audience of readers. Scale was never going to be what set us apart. Indeed, scale as a basic goal didn’t just not make sense for us. It was inimical, an obstacle to what made us special and unique. This didn’t and doesn’t mean we don’t want to grow. We do and we have over those years. What it means is that our business, our existence will never be based on our bigness.
What went with that is a core belief I’ve developed from 15+ years running the editorial and business side of TPM. A publication can survive on ad dollars alone. But it can’t be great or special without a direction financial relationship with its readers. I shouldn’t say that so categorically. Every publication is different and finds its own way. But I think it applies in most cases. And it definitely applies to TPM.
So if you’re a regular reader I’m asking you to join us as a member, to help us keep TPM vital, live and thriving and frankly better than it’s ever been. It’s just $4.99 a month, 14 cents a day, $50 a year. Barely more than an overpriced cup of coffee for a whole month.
If you’re a core reader you’ll get stuff I guarantee you you’ll love – stuff most of our subscribers have learned and decided they can’t do without. A desktop site with dramatically fewer ads (your membership fees make that possible), never more than two banner ads on a page and zero ads ever on your smart phone. You get access to The Arch, our new online magazine with a steady stream of longform articles like our debut article earlier this week on the biography of the AR-15 rifle. You get a faster version of the site, more features, access to The Hive, our member discussion forum and a whole lot more that we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks.
Is it important? Yes, it really is. Very important to the future of TPM and our ability to bring you the news and commentary we bring you every day. And making it better. Now, I know myself there’s a lot of stuff I want to sign up for or buy. There’s one partly paywalled publication I’ve decided I’m going to sign up for but I keep not doing it. I’m at work, I’ll get to it later. It’s a hassle to type in my credit card number. I keep putting it off till a bit later. So what I really need for you to do is stop right now – like this isn’t a phrase, I mean, actually right now – whatever you’re doing and take like two minutes just to take the plunge. Take out you’re wallet, and click this link. It’ll only take a couple of minutes and you’ve got a three day trial period. So there’s really no risk.
Ready? Just click right here. You’ll be glad you did. I promise.
